GEORGETOWN — Artist and author Dahlov Ipcar received Georgetown’s Outstanding Citizen Award at the annual “Get To Know Your Neighbor Party’ on March 17. The ceremony was held at the Georgetown Community Center.

Nominated by Georgetown residents the award recognizes Dahlov’s “outstanding” achievements and contributions to Georgetown and her craft. She is a prolific artist and is still painting, publishing and showing her work at the age of 95. Her fanciful jungle motifs are uniquely hers and are revered as the most imaginative modern paintings being produced today.

Georgia Kennett, whose family has been friends with the Ipcars and Zorach’s for decades, presented the award. Kennett ended her speech with these words … “We the people of Georgetown certainly recognize her many artistic abilities, however most of all we love and respect Dahlov and feel proud indeed that Dahlov is a citizen of Georgetown.”

The award read in part, “For a lifelong passion to her work and community. For a love of island life and all she creates from it. For sharing herself through art and literature.”

Dahlov spoke in front of a record crowd who came to honor one of Georgetown’s most celebrated citizens. She said she never expected the award and it meant a lot to her to be recognized by her friends and neighbors. She reminisced about her early years on the island with her late husband Adolf who received the same award at the age of 95. Adolf Ipcar died in 2003.

They came to Georgetown before World War II — before there was electricity or telephone service on the island. In 1937 after a year of married life in New York City, Dahlov and Adolf Ipcar moved to the farmhouse on the property of her artist parents William and Marquerite Zorach on the banks of Robinhood Cove. They were subsistent farmers, raised their two boys here, and Dahlov Ipcar continued what would become a long and successful career as a painter and author.

Ipcar still lives and paints in the 1860 farmhouse she shared with her husband for 70 years.

She said she had never traveled far or been to Europe or had a desire to do so. They had everything they needed on their island farm. She said her creations come from her head and heart and she has been fortunate to make a living doing what she loves and living the simple life in Georgetown.

The Get To Know Your Neighbor Party and the Outstanding Citizen Award is sponsored by the Georgetown Recreation Committee.